C (Below expectations)

D (Very bad)

F (Intolerable, want money back)

In the comics, Xavier didn't exactly have a perfect childhood as he was abused by his stepbrother, Cain Marko (Juggernaut), and stepfather. Seeing as Juggernaut wasn't really linked to Charles Xavier in X-Men 3, I can understand why Xavier's upbringing was quite different in the movies.

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Charles does mention having a stepfather to Havok (he put in the bomb shelter in the mansion) although Juggernaut is not in the picture.

Darwin was clearly just there to die. His powers are lame, he raises the stakes... I'm fine with it. (I have no prior knowledge or attachment to the character - and he had a fairly heroic and cool death scene!)

Darwin was clearly just there to die. His powers are lame, he raises the stakes... I'm fine with it. (I have no prior knowledge or attachment to the character - and he had a fairly heroic and cool death scene!)

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His death scene bothered me because it contradicted his power.

"I adapt to survive."

Well, apparently not.

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It's the age old "This is how powerful the villain is, by showing him take down the biggest and strongest".

In this case, Darwin is the toughest to kill, therefore the most dangerous. By his very nature he can't die. How do you absolutely show that Shaw is not to be messed with? Have him (not his henchmen) kill the unkillable.

And then get that to motivate the youngins, who, up until that point, weren't taking things as serious as they should.

On one hand, I was okay with it, 'cause they showed him tryin' to deal with the energy that was put into him a couple of different ways, so his power was at work at the time.

On the other hand, while it was happenin', I could just hear my friends' voices in my head, screamin', "Oh, sure, kill the black man!!!"

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Yeah, I admit I was thinking "Of course they killed the black guy" too. I thought the guy who played Darwin did a good job with his screen time and I agree that it was an effective way to put over strong, dangerous, and evil Shaw was.

If Erik has spent his life tracking the mutants who killed his family, doesn't it undercut the idea that he's reacting to persecution from humans? That he spends his life believing he's defending mutants from humans?

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Wasn't he tracking down the people who killed his family? I mean he didn't necessarily know Kevin Bacon was a mutant or even what mutants or people with abilities were or that there were others.

Darwin was clearly just there to die. His powers are lame, he raises the stakes... I'm fine with it. (I have no prior knowledge or attachment to the character - and he had a fairly heroic and cool death scene!)

Click to expand...

His death scene bothered me because it contradicted his power.

"I adapt to survive."

Well, apparently not.

Click to expand...

It's the age old "This is how powerful the villain is, by showing him take down the biggest and strongest".

In this case, Darwin is the toughest to kill, therefore the most dangerous. By his very nature he can't die. How do you absolutely show that Shaw is not to be messed with? Have him (not his henchmen) kill the unkillable.

And then get that to motivate the youngins, who, up until that point, weren't taking things as serious as they should.

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Yeah, I get it. It may have been more effective if I actually gave a shit about Darwin. As it was, though, it very much felt like a "kill off the black guy" moment.

If Erik has spent his life tracking the mutants who killed his family, doesn't it undercut the idea that he's reacting to persecution from humans? That he spends his life believing he's defending mutants from humans?

Click to expand...

Wasn't he tracking down the people who killed his family? I mean he didn't necessarily know Kevin Bacon was a mutant or even what mutants or people with abilities were or that there were others.

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Erik told Charles that he thought he was the only one with special abilities.

The scene in the South American bar shows he was killin' Nazis while also lookin' for Shaw.

As far as he was concerned, he was persecuted by humans and killin' or torturin' anyone he could find that had to do with his persecution and the death of his parents.

If Erik has spent his life tracking the mutants who killed his family, doesn't it undercut the idea that he's reacting to persecution from humans? That he spends his life believing he's defending mutants from humans?

Click to expand...

Wasn't he tracking down the people who killed his family? I mean he didn't necessarily know Kevin Bacon was a mutant or even what mutants or people with abilities were or that there were others.

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One thing that got lost with his Nazi hunting is Erik as a family man. In the comics, he was married doctor and the father of a little girl.

I don't know if the X-Men have the rights to use Quicksilver and The Scarlett Witch. They debuted in the X-Men comics but the bulk of their time has been spent with the Avengers and I would assume Marvel Studios owns the rights to them.

Hasn't Lorna Dane being his daughter been retconned a bunch of times? That being said, I'd like to see her as a new character in First Class 2. It would give both the X-Men (especially Havok) and Magneto a personal stake and would explore the Magneto family man concept.

You know, they did change the nature of Hank's mutation in the sense that he had big hands as well as big feet. He could definitely hide his feet in public so I didn't quite get all of his complaining about his mutation. Although I can definitely see that being a problem with any potential love interest.

I'm pretty sure Lorna is still his daughter currently. I know House of M treated her as his daughter as having her being part of the royal family. So Wanda obviously thought of her as her sister then...

For the iPad, there's an app from Fox (no idea if the people behind the movie are involved in it) that is a 1960's magazine showing events after the end of the movie. It shows a picture of President Kennedy meeting a standing Charles Xavier at the White House. I'd say astral projection is probably a pretty good guess.

Probably the best X-Men movie yet. Yes, I'd say it is at better or at least on par with "X-Men" and "X2". There's a LOT of plot material covered, and a lot of epic moments, and it just works much better as a cohesive unit than I expected.

The continuity issue is an interesting one, and the film actually works better as a prequel than I expected. One could imagine that the Cuba incident was hushed up, and we could end up with the situation as shown in "X-Men". (Although perhaps my movie canon knowledge is foggy) Right or not, they certainly marketed the film as a prequel.

But I still wish that the movies had started out this way, instead of having a strict path and character end points that need to be followed. In that way, perhaps it would have been better if "X-Men: First Class" was a true reboot.

Biggest pros:
- McAvoy and Fassbender own their roles
- Azazel (?) way of killing was somewhat shocking but it makes sense
- The final end battle was pretty darn EPIC

Biggest cons:
- Angel, and the actress. Ugh.
- Emma Frost, and the actress. Ugh.
- Emma Frost's transformations, that somehow also made her clothes into diamonds. Bleh. Why couldn't they have her diamond shape wear the same lingerie?

Another somewhat bummer is that I wish the Professor-X/Magneto final plot development would have been left for a sequel. I would have liked to see them work together more.

Saw it last night and, while I know I'm in the minority by a fair bit, I was underwhelmed. Grade: C.

I liked:

- Fassbender's Erik, for the most part.
- McAvoy's Xavier, for the most part.
- the several tips of the hat to the early comic & characters (including the costumes)
- the Erik/Charles relationship and development
- how Charles was paralyzed
- the Concentration Camp scenes
- How Erik "disposes of" Shaw
- early, non-hairy Beast
- Havok
- Banshee
- the attempt to get the '60s feel right
- that Fassbender was able to pull off the dramatic final beach scenes wearing that stupid helmet.

I disliked:

- how they barely kept Erik's personality from becoming Logan's
- the first pub scene, where they tried to establish Charles as a roguish ladies man, which he then proceeds not to be for the rest of the movie; totally unnecessary to the plot and slowed the movie down unnecessarily (a recurring theme for me.)
- January Jones (can't act her way out of a paper bag)
- how slow and plodding the movie was. It needed a good editor, and some life. I can't recall ever being bored before in a comic book movie (okay, maybe Daredevil.)
- how they only made a half hearted attempt to get the '60s feel of the movie right; clothes, cars, horn-rimmed glasses and a groovy white sitting room aren't enough, and the other bits they attempted seemed superficial and inconsistently used.
- the "fish bowl" scene, when the CIA facility was attacked and the "kids" all just watched from an incredibly vulnerable position
- that they didn't make me really care about any of the secondary characters, such as Darwin; I felt nothing when he died.
- the "training montage", which seemed to have been intended to be lively and action-packed, instead came off plodding and filled with more comic relief than action.
- the blue Beast make up; HORRIBLE!
- that they used the Moira McTaggart name for a role that was completely unlike her character and could have been filled by any number of other Marvel characters.
- Magneto's helmet. I liked that they brought in the concept and explained it and stayed consistent with X1, but using the actual original design just ended up being comical (and not in a good way.)

It was okay, but just left me more disappointed than entertained. I actually found myself yawning and looking at my watch at points. I'm one of those old time geeks who collected the X-Men comics from the very beginning, so I admit I may be overly critical of the movies. On the other hand, I enjoyed X1 just fine. This had so much potential, and has been so highly touted, I suppose that may have led to some of my disappointment.

Anyway, just one viewer's opinion. No more or less valid than anyone else's, I suppose, but there it is. Let the bashing begin.

-Xavier's injurry during the final battle being what requires him to go in the wheelchair, despite the fact that we saw him walking in the flashback in X3 and his cameo in Wolverine.

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I guess this is a case of simply choosing to ignore X3.

-Xavier and Magneto split at the end and Magneto turns villain, despite the X3 flashback shows them working together as recently as 20 years prior.
-Xavier and Mystique is one of those things that doesn't really contradict anything, but also just doesn't fit. They were so close growing up, and indeed there didn't really seem to be any bad blood between them when she chose to join Magneto, so why does she so willingly poison him in the first movie?

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These two can easily be chalked up to the notion that "a lot of things can happen in 40+ years."

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So can the walking. Like I said earlier, maybe he discovered a treatment or mechanism in those years that allowed him to walk, and that's what we saw in X3 and Wolverine. But of course, whatever he tried didn't totally work or didn't last, and he was forced to go back to the wheelchair.

For the iPad, there's an app from Fox (no idea if the people behind the movie are involved in it) that is a 1960's magazine showing events after the end of the movie. It shows a picture of President Kennedy meeting a standing Charles Xavier at the White House. I'd say astral projection is probably a pretty good guess.